It's not just the icons. The entire UI has been grayscaled and "simplified." Simplified meaning they have removed anything that would demarcate the background from something you can interact with.

Oh okay.

I haven't spent as much time with it as some of you but I think it's decent so far. I like several of the applications (Mail, Messaging, People, etc.) & can imagine myself barely using the Desktop.

To be fair, it has improved significantly since the dev preview. It's almost something I'd consider putting on a touchpad, if I had one.

Stardock to the rescue!

http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/



Link to fullsize image of Start Menu:
http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/images/after.png

hey look its that thing i said they should do

Hahahah, exactly. Exactly. The amount of people who are going to go "WHAT THE HELL?!" when this arrives is going to be mind-boggling.

Microsoft seems to have forgotten what the corners are good for. They are great CLICK targets, because it's easy to navigate to. But they're only click targets if there's a FRICKIN' BUTTON. You don't see Firefox stickin that menu in the upper left with no button to signify its location, right? So why the hell does Microsoft think this is a good idea?

I refuse to believe that all their usability testing came to the conclusion that it was still usable. I know they have huge investments in it, but seriously? Maybe they did say it was horrendous, and some higher-up went "NEVERMIND THAT, WE'RE GONNA PULL A STEVE JOBS".

Wow from what I've read here and elsewhere Windows 8 on the desktop sounds dire. I might have to try it myself just to see.

That stardock thing looks like a win7 skin for xp. Which is kind of sad.

Dear Microsoft,

http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html

Sincerely,

- Jon`C

Old people can't use computers anyway.

Old people use it all the time, at work.
Windows 8 will sell 0 enterprise copies.

That particular old man is being very careful, investigating and reading everything on the screen, even the evaluation copy notice. He then searched for hidden menus for several minutes. He was literally doing everything correctly. The problem is Windows 8 gives you absolutely no reason to believe the corners do anything.

Forget the UI for a moment. Does it do anything that 7 can't do? Or does it do things better than 7 can do them?

The first time that I tried it out, I had to restart because I got stuck in one of the applications & couldn't figure out how to get back to Start. It was only by accident that I did discover how to do this (I ran my mouse across the top-right corner of VirtualBox to mouse-escape & a menu popped up for a brief moment). I didn't know about the bottom-left menu until after watching the video that Jon'C posted. Granted, I could just blame myself for not reading more about the UI before using it, but I suppose the point is that the vast majority of people won't be doing so.

How backwards-compatible will this version be? I honestly haven't read much on the subject & am mostly concerned with playing older games (for instance, getting JK to run on 7 was headache enough). I'll be in the market for a new laptop soon, possibly around the time that 8 releases (or maybe slightly sooner).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8

No real game changers in my opinion. Boot from USB device might be useful to me. The Bootup/Shutdown/Resume speed tweaks are nice, I heard Win8 can resume a wireless connection in < 1s as opposed to Win7 which usually takes several seconds.